Whether you want to share photos or videos with family members or share files and collaborate with coworkers at single or multiple locations, drop.io (pronounced “drop ee-oh”) makes it astonishingly simple. Forget using YouSendIt.com or SendThisFile- this site’s easier, faster, and you don’t even have to create a logon.

All you need to do is click the button to create a drop (the spot where you’ll ‘drop’ your files). You can customize the URL if you wish:

From there, you can add music, photo, MS Office files, URL’s, and video clips in a snap. For Firefox users, there’s an add-on that facilitates the process; it’s simple without it as well. You get 100MB of space per “drop”. If you need more, upgrades are available.

From a collaboration standpoint, a couple of features are especially handy: you can subscribe friends or colleagues to the drop so that every time a file is added, they receive an email notification. In addition, voicemail and conference call features are built in. Want to explain a file or comment on a photo? Leave a message on the drop’s voicemail – all users can listen in.

Of course, if you want to make the drop secure, requiring logons, you can do so in a matter of moments. You can also restrict guest’s ability to add, delete, or comment on files. drop.io’s capabilities are as extensive as you would need, yet it couldn’t be simpler to create your first drop and get started.

I was wondering how this compares to DropBox. Dropbox has been a life saver for syncing my files between all the computers at my different business locations, and saves me from 3AM worries about crashes but this is obviously snazzier to view. But while pretty is nice, I find Dropbox so incredibly easy and useful.

J. Hicks: the 30 day trial refers to “drop.io Manager”, which is their professional product. Anyone can use the basic drop.io site for free, storing up to 100MB of data, and create as many drops as they like. To me, that’s still free. Do I have it wrong? kc